Was An Underage Male Rape Victim Ordered To Pay Child Support To His Rapist?

A story making the rounds about an underage male rape victim forced to pay child support to his alleged rapist — to the tune of more than $20,000 in arrears and nearly $500 a month — has outraged advocates of men’s rights. But did the situation described really occur?

The original posts about the male rape victim, a teen at the time, sexually assaulted by his babysitter and then forced to pay thousands of dollars in child support all goes back to a single source. While the tale is widely quoted on the web, all roads for the story alleging a Nebraska woman named Linda Kazinsky was granted child support after the statutory rape of a young man named Jeremy Steen lead back to the single, shaky source.

According to the widely quoted child support rape story involving Steen and Kazinsky, the latter repeatedly abused the former and became pregnant as a result of the statutory rape. The news story claims:

“In 2008, Steen was seduced and raped repeatedly by his 34-year-old baby sitter Linda Kazinsky. Sources testified that the sexual abuse took place weekly for nearly 3 years. After police were alerted, Ms. Kazinsky was arrested and charged with statutory rape and false imprisonment.”

Adding that the alleged rapist collecting child support had been working as a caregiver for Jeremy Steen’s family for three years, the post goes on:

“After Kazinsky’s release from Nebraska’s state prison system in 2012 she was able to regain custody of her child. The child had been a ward of the state for the first 13 months until Debra Kazinsky, Linda’s sister, was able to gain custody. After being reunited with her child, Kazinsky promptly filed for Aid and Government assistance which in turn landed Jeremy with a subpena for child support… Jeremy had his day in court and was ordered to pay $475 a month in child support to Linda Kazinsky as well as a whopping $23,000 in back Child Support payments.”

The post concludes that “men are victimized as much as women” in issues of rape and child support, and understandably the shocking tale has been spread far and wide on the web.

The catch? There’s no evidence that this occurred even in the barest way, and none that either party exists — much less that the state ordered a rape victim to pay his alleged attacker child support.

The Tumblr Post Busters investigated the claims and the viral story, eventually learning that a situation that only remotely resembles the above story had indeed occurred. That is to say that an underage male was ordered to pay child support to a far older women when she became pregnant by him, but none of the elements of the story otherwise apply.

That case happened in California, not Nebraska, and the parties involved were not named Linda Kazinsky and Jeremy Steen. Court records for that case name the 34-year-old woman charged with statutory rape as Ricci Jones, and the minor male simply as “Nathaniel J.” Moreover, the issue of consent only came into play when the issue of support did, which is not to say that such a circumstance excuses statutory rape.

“Alright, did some research on this. I’d like to preface that I am completely aware that these things do happen, but this case does not appear to have occurred… A search for ‘Lincoln, Nebraska’ AND ‘Kazinsky’ in Google provides nothing. Linda Kazinsky and Jeremy Steen do not appear to have a presence on the internet other than some people who appear to share Steen’s name.”

It’s quite likely that if the child support rape case involving Linda Kazinsky and Jeremy Steen were in any way true, some trace of the case would be more verifiably available through web searches — and in the absence of data, the likeliest victims of this story are the unfortunate people who probably share names with the made-up parties mentioned. We can only hope no one shares those names in Lincoln, Nebraska.